21 Great Quotes from Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

Venerable Fulton John Sheen (born Peter John Sheen, May 8, 1895 – December 9, 1979) was an American bishop (later archbishop) of the Catholic Church known for his preaching and especially his work on television and radio. His cause for canonization as a saint was officially opened in 2002. In June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI officially recognized a decree from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints stating that he lived a life of “heroic virtues” – a major step towards beatification – so he is now referred to as “Venerable.”

“Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.”

“When a man loves a woman, he has to become worthy of her. The higher her virtue, the more noble her character, the more devoted she is to truth, justice, goodness, the more a man has to aspire to be worthy of her. The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.”

“The greatest love story of all time is contained in a tiny white host.”

“Never forget that there are only two philosophies to rule your life: the one of the cross, which starts with the fast and ends with the feast. The other of Satan, which starts with the feast and ends with the headache.”

“We can think of Lent as a time to eradicate evil or cultivate virtue, a time to pull up weeds or to plant good seeds. Which is better is clear, for the Christian ideal is always positive rather than negative. A person is great not by the ferocity of his hatred of evil, but by the intensity of his love for God. Asceticism and mortification are not the ends of a Christian life; they are only the means. The end is charity. Penance merely makes an opening in our ego in which the Light of God can pour. As we deflate ourselves, God fills us. And it is GOD’s arrival that is the important event.”

“Lenten practices of giving up pleasures are good reminders that the purpose of life is not pleasure. The purpose of life is to attain to perfect life, all truth and undying ecstatic love – which is the definition of God. In pursuing that goal we find happiness. Pleasure is not the purpose of anything; pleasure is a by-product resulting from doing something that is good. One of the best ways to get happiness and pleasure out of life is to ask ourselves, “How can I please God?’ and, ‘Why am I not better?’ It is the pleasure-seeker who is bored, for all pleasures diminish with repetition.”

“There is no subject on which the average mind is so much confused as the subject of tolerance and intolerance. Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to principles. Intolerance applies only to principles, but never to persons.”

“I am worried about America! I am not so much worried about its politics and economics, important though they be: I am worried about its soul. After all, politics and economics are determined by the sense of values which underlies them.”

“Pride is an admission of weakness; it secretly fears all competition and dreads all rivals.”

“It is not particularly difficult to find thousands who will spend two or three hours a day in exercising, but if you ask them to bend their knees to God in five minutes of prayer, they protest that it is too long.”

“Depression comes from not having faults but from refusal to face them. There are tens of thousands of persons today suffering from fears which in reality are nothing but the effects of hidden sin. The examination of conscience will cure us of self-deception. It will also cure us of depression!”

“The denial of personal guilt makes men ready to surrender their liberty. Better it is for a man to realize he has evil tendencies which must be fought and combated in order that his higher self may emerge.”

“Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.”

“Life is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded.”

“Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.”

“Hearing nuns’ confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.”

“Baloney is flattery laid on so thick it cannot be true, and blarney is flattery so thin we love it.”

“Never measure your generosity by what you give, but rather by what you have left.”

“Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?”

“There are not over a 100 people in the U.S. that hate the Catholic Church, there are millions however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church, which is, of course, quite a different thing.”

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